"ekg" poems
There is a city that only I inhabit, and there is one in you, too
but that must mean houses are there
or a hotel one may stay during a visit. I guess it depends
on who you ask, if they believe in an everlasting love big enough
to fill the whole metropolis inside a person.
I did not know until I met you that cavities within me
could welcome a second resident and he would stay staring at
these organs without
thinking they look unnatural, like paintings x-rays EKG screens.
I am sorry for explaining this to everyone but I am just
so happy that my heartbeat sounds like
a ticking clock to you – we hold bodies that tell their own time.
Jul 11, 2013
Jul 11, 2013 at 1:54 AM UTC
The living reality of a metaphor, almost every ounce in-taken,
Every nuance, every pronounce, measured, weighted and weighty,
Fluid or firmament, each encapsulated, prior to release, scaled,
Tabulated, ordered, noted, recorded, and ultimately judg-ed.
Totality of it all, the varied quantities of the ingested nutrients,
even the forecast of the future, if every day was a metaphor for
like today…
DO
I speak of the day's headlines?
Of the quantity and nutrition that passes through my lips?
Or
The surround sound of the surrounding sounds of this day,
the flocks of bandito geese who exist only to torment,
the landscape working crews, with their tools, like a 7::00an wake up buzzing about, for the entire street, going house to house, looking for itinerant grassy knolls of patches of bright green,
overnight sprung up and needy to be
guillotined,
laundry to do, rugs needy for clothesline screaming/beating or merely super fast vacuuming;
they, hawking their skills available for the old and infirm,
or the fatty catty cattle lazy, (somewhere in there is moi);
and the decibels of their machines, the rat-a-tat of their rapido, voluble speech that feeds me poetry by the ounce of their laughter, but more exactly of,
What do I speak, to what do I allude?
Why all and none, everything and specifically nothing,
for the metaphor is meta! (1)
It is life itself, from the quarter teaspoon
to the overflowing bath, it is life at its most incremental,
the moment
of flushing face,
the second
of ah ha! recollection, the,
long term trends
trending,
the flatline of my EKG,
the weighty pronouncement of my talking scale (you've been bad),
IT IS THE EVERYTHING
that is measurable, weighable, isolatable, defined;
it is our existence of our each & every of action and inaction strung together like a necklace and a chain
We are metaphor, reality, is, the script,
which is the product of you.
scriptwriter…/
Aug 8, 2025
Aug 8, 2025 at 6:17 PM UTC
<6:36 AM>
~for Joanne Louise Veronika~
patches of light, snatches of sleep,
cumulative tallies of every 24 hour arrhythmia,
detect heart alarms ringing, watch warnings screeching beeping
who cares!
new commitment, self imposed!
greet the early ones with sooth and java,
a combination, “all across the nation,”
ease them in from sleeply lyrical dreams,
to a clear sky, renew anew, bay waters
running new tide fast, tiny tendrils of water points,
etch-a-sketch paths to a calm souls restoration
the smoke haze bad dream departed,
sun rays warmth for the invisible innards,
waves look like the EKG of human at peace,
resting heart rate steady and rhythmically sweet
and I laugh at myself, preposterous!
this is my secret path to restoration,
please laugh at me, join the raucous joy
of not-taking-yourself too seriously,
meaning of a new light, fresh waters,
of an old friend, the same diurnal perspective,
a new alphabet that spells but a singular duality,
a two-word~poem of
meditative perfection:
calm sheltering
Jun 10, 2023
Jun 10, 2023 at 7:05 AM UTC
WARNING: THIS IS EXCEEDINGLY EXPLICIT...
(when for a pinpoint (the exact moment) i am nurses sift home again EKG's
it all went wrong
CT scans on the timeline
i will repeat this then i am whole again
i will defeat this hole again)
when I first
there was had in my stockings caught it something about the small red, i did not believe it. them like cardboard, and ******* now i, caught saw it, my ****** high heels, i did not believe it. them kunts like cardboard as a child i loved
and the great swan **** with a straight razor, hot water, shaving cream
dragging these white are in four directions ******* my *** hows my ***** sheets me with a ***** and licking she said
for another my thick dark ***** juice colors my arms have too many carry the face of emptinesses i **** me *** tongue on shooting that i did not look
regarding my *** me blow jobs with **** *** in attention. cannot help what wet ***** happens in me pink ****** fingers will happen without smiling attention. I ripped dripping my bra off ******* off i do not think so. i do not think so. the moon's concern is with my ***** ******* hard. **** me **** me with the particles of destruction
i **** up. am i my **** a pulse hard and swallowing
lick my ***** loved its perfections **** is my dead self one that **** could is not flat only be perfect such flatness cannot make a heaven i am not ugly. i am even beautiful.
Aug 7, 2013
Aug 7, 2013 at 11:43 PM UTC
Sometimes there’s this emptiness in the soul
With which the saddest songs would not heal
And the soft kisses of tissues would not soothe
The burns of the acidic tears
Something in there
Cannot be resurrected
Nor stimulated
With a thousand voltage defibrillator
Most of the time,
the rotting flesh is still alive
The heart still beats
The EKG device monitoring
Each stubborn peak and trough
Sometimes
In this blind bleakness,
There is still a small spark
An iridescent bubble that refuses to be burst
And with quiet determination,
There is a defiance to live
And sometimes
This small act of defiance
Is the greatest courage of all
Dec 3, 2013
Dec 3, 2013 at 4:29 AM UTC
It came quickly, roots
broke through marbled concrete
And vines draped off
balconies of skyscrapers
Floor to ceiling windows
disappeared behind ivy
Some beasts melted into shadows
around the corner as their
barks were adopted
by the wind and pushed
in strollers by the howl
and the cold bite
In the air, you could hear
unattended car alarms
And neon signs flickering
on and off as they hum like
a deathbed, EKG flat-line
Hanged stoplights
swayed back and forth
off streetlight arms
bent like telekinetic spoons
spinning like criminals
left on olive trees to die
And the drab color seemed
strangely magnetic and
right
I can swallow a pretty big storm
May 11, 2013
May 11, 2013 at 1:11 PM UTC
Nah you were a corpse with a noose around your neck with just a blip of a heart beat on an EKG made of trees laying to rest.
She's a scared little girl and the only way she knows how to survive is off the blood and life of other people.
So I tease and tease the needle injecting, inspecting the vein liquid.
Laying up in that bed for hours with your kidneys being your friends and your head ripping your chest from your intercostals tossing your throat out your teeth through the grate lain cross your open gape
A chamber we both never wanted you lain.
Gas chambering hospital of mucus and babies puking their dead guts out.
Septic ulcer, septic shock, sepsemia.
All the bacteria love you like your their mother inlaws.
And finally you set us free from mine
That caniving, ruthless wretch watched you in the bed.
Floated above ours watching us both.
Escaped we did and finally we won't go back.
Anorexic we starve ourselves now of sharing carbon and gravitating space pits.
The blankets still make dips where we lay but they aren't the same blanket, the threads aren't long enough to cross and make up the same fabric between 100 miles so that an immediate affect between the atoms can be felt between us.
My babies still kicking though.
That's safe.
Aug 27, 2014
Aug 27, 2014 at 3:49 PM UTC
Let's play a game
grab a glass and take a seat
let's play until you or me
can not rise to our feet
think about your lover
and where she is now
that she isn't with you
and the sweat above your brow
Did you over think?
Drink
think about your life
where you thought you'd be in 10 years
20 years ago
how you're holding back tears
Did you over think?
Drink
think about yourself
the man your parents raised
have you lived up to expectations
as your EKG plays
Did you over think?
Drink
Jul 7, 2014
Jul 7, 2014 at 10:01 PM UTC
Wireshell trash can sweep-brushed
by Fusion, Alero, Chrysler Something.
They’re filled to the brim like sepia-stained
skyscrapers with swivel chairs and water cooler
pow-wows. Boss’ talking fax machines
and projections for the second fiscal quarter,
flipping a stock EKG reading on its *** We’re
all millionaires. All up like the NYSE at seven o’clock
in our living rooms watching the fireplace
playfully threaten our investments while CNN
sends money through the VCR slot. Cars, no
garbage trucks, cars, cars, scraping hubcaps off
the high sidewalks like beautiful harpsichords.
Neighbors. Suitcases and dresser drawers
packed tight with meat tape, paper towels,
and coffee mugs/fine China make heaped trash bags
seem obsolete. There’s no garbage here.
Downtown’s neon district makes enough
that they could afford a glowsign on every window,
every square inch of every lunch special, gallery opening,
or Salvation Army bell-ringer.
Forget New York,
we're the city that never sleeps.
Nov 18, 2014
Nov 18, 2014 at 7:38 PM UTC
~for Vinnie Brown~
even your kindergarten crushes?
what burdens you seek to retain,
the edgy border of delicious and pain
is a raggedy cut line,
as lost lovings, rhymes with duality
Once upon a time,
a middle aged man
left the woman he married,
the one who drained and cruel reigned
over the destruction of his-dreams,
for one accidentally stumbled into,
the love who blurred his edges as well,
between forgotten happiness and
pain so awesome bad when she grew tired
of his life's complications,
she left him,
weeping on the corner of Broadway and 83rd Street
was that 20, 30 years ago?
a memory
from no matters land
but
the physical ache that marred the hearth in the chest for
months and months,
sent him to the doc who smiled sweetly
but gave him, had no, no relief for
busted grownup hearts
with normal EKG's
that remains a treasured affirmation to this day of
life's capacity to love that comes with
an ingrown danger
of never forgetting
did you know the French outlawed the use of the term
Mademoiselle in '12 (Mlle.)?
I loved that salutation,
calling my one true lovers
with the soft feminism of that address
and still do
and you want to recall
kindergarten crushes?
Mister Vinnie
possesses a lovely contradiction,
holding onto
lost lover sickness
that lives on in good love poems
this my new found poet,
is how that he, this aching heart,
fast approaching his shore line for one last return
and final departure
repays a sweet compliment,
from one who complements
anothe man's lovely's insane desire to
never forget any of it
~~~
reading Vinne Brown's poetry
https://hellopoetry.com/vinnie-brown/
and listening to Joni M.
at 3:09AM;
never wise,
but full of hindsight
Aug 26, 2017
Aug 26, 2017 at 3:19 AM UTC
When I tell you you're beautiful,
I need you to believe me.
I need you to know
That I know what I'm talking about
When I say that I love
Every little nook and cranny
Of your entire being.
You must understand that
I love the way your
Hair parts on the side,
That small wrinkle in your forehead.
That is my wrinkle.
I am the cause of that wrinkle.
I love that sparkle in
Your plain brown eyes.
That cute little nose
Complemented by
Those luscious lips.
Lord, have mercy.
I could go on for
Forever and a day
Just to say the
Same resounding message.
Sweetheart, you're
More than beautiful.
You're heart-stopping.
Jun 7, 2016
Jun 7, 2016 at 5:00 PM UTC
Stop and start my heart again
Put my chart in its yellow bin
take my roaring pulse
feel my blood calamity up
how do you fix broken mind
because I'm flying blind
Whats the cure for frostbite of the heart?
again, I don't really want to start
I have a medical history
of a freezing heart
and in this summer
the feelings growing number
measure the beating of my heart
look at the EKG
my life in a pattern
up down up down up
...
isnt that a way to go
fix my broken bones
i tried catching up to you
i tripped over myself
and now i have to stop
untill i can see you again
Jun 16, 2015
Jun 16, 2015 at 10:29 PM UTC
She drew a breath and let it go as she crept closer to the edge. She shivered as her toes, painted pink, hugged the ledge. She brushed a trespassing orange hair from her brow and and stretched her arms to the sky. Took one final breath as she closed her eyes. She leapt. Pushed her heels into the ground. Then the pads of her toes. The tips of her toes. She extended her arms and flew. And as the world whizzed past in vibrant blacks and grays, the ground below her exploded into detail. It was amazing. Beautiful. The memories of her past were far from her mind, everything terrible shut behind the blinds. The ground rose up to meet her and caressed her cheek. She regained her senses for only a moment and her green eyes flashed a smile. She opened her hands and pressed her fingers to the cool concrete and as a chill ran through her veins. The corners of her perfectly red lips pulled into a gentle smile, and she was happy. Her eyelids fluttered and then laid motionless above her freckled cheeks. She faded as she melted into the ground.----- Her nose twitched and wrinkled to the singe of winter’s chill and the smell of hospital food. She awoke, eyes closed, to the rhythmic chirp of an EKG machine. She ran her hand up her arm and felt the IV and needles. She slowly came out of unconsciousness and felt pain and then her mothers fingers entwined between hers. She knew it was her. She knew the shape of her hands well. Every curve and wrinkle, the indent from where her mother’s wedding ring once sat for so long, but not anymore. She felt the hands that had held her for sixteen years. Her eyes slowly flicked open and she found the flustered but relieved visage of her mother. The girl shut her eyes, quick. Hoping they would never open again.
May 20, 2012
May 20, 2012 at 3:25 AM UTC
You were like a breath of fresh air in a room full of poison.
You saved me, gave me mouth to mouth.
Checked the EKG to be sure that everything was fine.
I guess you should have gotten an x-ray.
Maybe then you could have foreseen the internal bleeding.
Maybe then you could have saved my soul.
Apr 13, 2016
Apr 13, 2016 at 3:03 PM UTC
i'd like to know how staying in a hospital
is described as a "comedy drama".
my "red-band society"
was nothing like the show depicts
these kids
these kids are happy
they're joyous while they're flirting and making out in a closet
for fuck's sake, that's not even high school
the nurses aren't your friends
they aren't there to hold your hand while you die
they have jobs to do and lives to save
my red-band society was me and my moms
but i was the only one who participated in the activities
i laid in bed with stickers and clips taped across my body
and the sleeve on my arm constricted
every fifteen minutes
i didn't hear laughter in the halls
i heard heart monitors erratically beeping
and hurried footsteps whenever someone was dying
i wasn't laughing over cancer and anorexia
i was laying awake at four in the morning getting my blood pressure checked every hour
the red-band society
is a constant EKG with a prolonged QT
that may lead to arrhythmia
you don't get to go to homecoming
you don't get to run or race in the hallways
hospitals shouldn't be romanticized
cancer isn't fun
anorexia isn't a phase
there is nothing happy about being checked in
about being sick
i was miserable
and this show is glorifying disease
kids are going to want to be hospitalized
there's no knowing what they'll do
to achieve what the program advertises
i'd like to know if the maker of the show
is in their right mind.
granted, people's experiences differ
but kids shouldn't be promised damaged friends
if they stop eating
if they run away from home
a hospital isn't a ******* playground
or a child's domain
the fact that they are showing doctors being this irresponsible is nauseating
nothing revolves around you
there are other people who need help too
and children will harm themselves
with the expectation of of video games and relaxation.
Nov 5, 2014
Nov 5, 2014 at 4:05 PM UTC
You will always follow me
Like melting canyon walls
Grown of glass
Forever folding inward
At my back.
In my mind;
Even when the rain clears up
You still stir
Your whitened waters.
One day,
When you left me
Mid-November,
heat still settles in only the South
The sun stole every sip
Slurped up every drop
From every pore
In my thinned body.
You almost killed me
I suppose-
Even then-
You tried to save me
Saving you
Hives across my body:
Holding aquifer pockets
Of your own blood.
You tried to warn me
With swollen, itchy
Reddened feet
My fingers burned,
But I went to sleep.
Awakened with delusion
You kicked at the curve
Of my knee
I; collapsed
Unconscious
With only pain running through my bedrock veins.
You left me,
With white running down my face.
You showed me how much mama loves me
Barely breathing
Bent over my body
With her own salty piece of you falling in my face.
Neaseous,
I could no longer hold you
No matter how much I longed to.
Mama took me to you.
Again, like glass on a November morning you sent ice through blue blood and back to my heart.
Like mama,
You screamed
Until you brought me conscious.
Twice mama had taken me to you
And on the first I'd fallen in love.
Hooked to an EKG
My eyes rolled back to when we met
As they pulled tubes of my blood from body
Weakened, I held only a blurred memory
Of three years ago
When you carried me over your muddied body,
Still with softened white ripples,
And warmed- no matter how far upstream- by July.
It was there
Touching the silk of your skin
With sun on my chest
And life at my back
That I promised
One day,
I would save you too.
Dec 7, 2013
Dec 7, 2013 at 1:51 PM UTC
The elderly skin on my heart
Is thin but will no longer stretch tight again
Like a baby girls innocent cheeks grin
My senior citizen love comes at no discount
It's free to anyone who wishes to
Count the wrinkles on my arms and legs
The scars of time
Face it
Age is not a number it's a place
The youth of my youngness short lived
Took a toll on my skeleton
Bare ***** attitude toward commitment
I give it away as skin cells turned to dust
Never would've guessed it would be
In my chest
I still have a certain amount of elegance
There's a smaller fire in my heart sight
Kept my cardiac eyes as peeled as I could
The fight fought genuinely
But never without naïveté
How can it be this shocking?
The overall life EKG
Oh I know I'm only twenty something
Don't think I'm trying to act mature
You've made it clear I'm another heart sore
But your words bounce around my skull and
In my chest
Age is ageless memories
Numbers are mathematics
My heart attack tactics
Have grown my heart love decrepit old
So if you hold my hearts hand
Stand for something
Please
If I hold your hand and
You flow through my heart
Understand I'm more than willing to
Start again from day one again
Just forgive the crevices in my sternum permeating my heart skin
Oct 15, 2013
Oct 15, 2013 at 4:06 PM UTC
i am the beat
the crescent shape
of a bent
smile
before a row of
coffee stained teeth.
i am the heart
that seeps
into bathtubs
filled with
blue water
before the blood
turns red
as it bleeds.
i am a pair
of wobbly knees
bent beneath
the thorax
of a
pious human being.
i am the voice
that screams
into the
fractaled crags
of a
barren
canopy
made of
the tops of dying
trees.
i am the
thinning heat;
the quickened
silver drops
of mercury clung
to the
mercurial
summer solstice
breeze.
i am that
i am these
and those
over there
the filthy and
the clean.
i am the
saddened longing
for what
hides
between
the
knees -
the skirts
the kilts
i am birds
i am bees.
i am
the Christ
born again at
11:11 am
gestations in the
akashic amniotic
fluid of
celestial
Krishna Kosmic
seas.
i am the dragon
belching
fires
as he breathes -
the
coiled serpent
sleeping
at the
base
of the
Knowledge Tree.
i am safe
because
i am He
and She
i am
the babe
at the *****
of the
Holy Mother,
i am
the Crone
on a
long
incarnation’s
Eve.
i am the
wounded
and the
weak;
the boastful,
macho - man ********
and the
humility
of the meek.
i am the
paycheck
at the end of a long
two weeks
and the long
walkabouts
of lotus- trodden
feet.
i am the
sinew
in
the
meat,
the tea
while it steeps,
the
pressure of the deeps;
i am the
EKG-
magnetic
snake skins
and
electric beeps.
i am the
one
who
perceives -
my self
upheld
in the arms of
Isis
swaddled in
Her
sleeves.
i am the lute
i am She
Who plucks my strings
Who listens
Who watches
while
i
dance
while
i
sing.
Jun 19, 2022
Jun 19, 2022 at 4:05 PM UTC
Split the sun
with an ax like velvet.
The braincase open,
the soul drips-
like egg yolk
onto the sandflats
the old blood ants march out
and pile up
into a monolith
sharp enough to scratch the azure off the sky
tall enough to disrupt the horizon
like a blip on your ancient EKG
that peaks like a drop in a pool
then crashes like a kettle drum.
No birds.
Empurpled sand towers darken silently
junipers twitch imperceptably
rattlesnake retreats beneath the dust.
A billion years of breath and tears
grinding the sediment down
a dramatic pull toward the distant sea.
Make sediment of me.
Mar 25, 2017
Mar 25, 2017 at 12:43 AM UTC
Now that I've pulled out the needles,
or that I've quit tracing the EKG,
I don't know where to dip my pen in.
Mar 9, 2016
Mar 9, 2016 at 6:12 PM UTC
You don't think I see it.
And, honestly,
I didn't recognize it at first.
I've never been on the receiving end of that look.
But, as they hook me up
With wires and sensors
For an EKG,
I can see it.
The way you look at me.
That fire in your eyes,
Always so resilient,
So passionate.
Like you could do anything
As long as you really wanted it.
But it looked like that fire,
Just now,
Was eating you alive.
The flames licking at the fragments
Of your heart.
It looked like pain.
Like loss.
Like the world is falling down all around you,
And there is nothing you can do to stop it.
I recognize that look, now.
I've seen it in my own reflection,
Staring back at me,
Venomous tears threatening to burn through my skin
If I were to let them fall.
A sandy lump in my throat,
When I finally understood.
You can love someone with every part of you,
With your whole heart.
You can love someone
Through lifetimes.
Through centuries.
You can love someone to the very end of the universe,
And back again.
But you cannot love someone's broken pieces back together.
But,
Sometimes,
When all I feel is searing pain,
I think of the pain in your eyes,
The very depth of it,
The intensity,
When you even entertain the thought of losing me.
And it suddenly occurs to me,
That you love me.
And as long as you love me,
As long as you're mine,
I'm not done here. No, not yet.
So I stand up.
I brush myself off,
And look directly into the void,
And wait for it to blink first.
I growl through gritted teeth,
****** from a split lip,
While clutching the lace hem
Of my pink sundress.
"I am not done here. No, not yet."
Sep 11, 2017
Sep 11, 2017 at 6:30 PM UTC
I don't know what to type
I don't know what to say
Do you have days like these?
Where the Depression is so crippling,
It slithers through your mind and snatches up your words,
It leaves your mouth open with a deafening scream of silence.
It molds your grey matter into an exploding question mark,
It pulls the plug.
All you hear is the incessant whine of the EKG machine; your mind has
flat lined.
That's how I feel every day of my life.
It manifests into a physical pain, right in the frontal lobe.
Is it real or am I psycho(somatic.)
I want to shove a knife through my forehead to break this curse,
The physical and emotional pain would stop then.
The knife would be inscribed, on it written:
Nothing.
Feb 24, 2014
Feb 24, 2014 at 12:14 AM UTC
Can dying be like turning off the radio? tuning in for channels from left to right ,extracting something sullen from a switch or a dial
blurbs of breaths interrupted like commercials getting their paid minutes of madness included in your daily drain
Staying in static staving off the mostly erratic ,we listen & hear but never draw near brushing it away as trifle
Many many options, but who is making the rules of when it should stop or what will be the proper words to explain
many never consider moving the numbers ,call signs always waiting to catch us in our prime times
Breathing outward to us, capturing capsules of our minds ,received but not welcomed another number another day
Between the hissing maybe vocal, for many never thought of more than local , moving on ,humming, simply trying to make rhymes
Making an action from voices echoing from autos,hallways, has become so integrated that thought never develops it is just Passe
The power from those towers can be far reaching flailing out three hundred sixty degree waves of blind finesse
Like sirens from a sonnet we take in the vibrations filling us flawlessly ,often over riding all previous notions
Now a newer unknown way of reception with nerves and neurons regulating the actions of a soul that will regress
Upbeat harmonies similar to patterns of a heart beat, sent out through receivers ,be it stereo or EKG & EEG
Brought in felt is rising ,falls, patterns of charts or felt as soft art, quick decisions now bring new emotions
Transfixed on some beacons belching out mindless material between static ,shaky even erratic or even magic
Simple samples of voices taking notes as we turn the dial ,Passover or stay put depending on the vibe
Once released how far can the true transmissions travel,ever really lost or just passing into the abyss without ever being tragic
So A.M. or F.M. begun with tuning in ,just blending ,taken as common background expressions , becoming to accustomed with pleasantries
or patterns until the sudden LOUD rush of blind blaring induces a reaction to maybe an ending to the program that we have long been subscribed .....R.C.
Jun 2, 2016
Jun 2, 2016 at 8:24 PM UTC
White-knuckle ransom note,
to the one.
There is a picket fence
outside a great and quaint Victorian ranch.
There, the weeds will never grow,
and he shall go off the defense.
Doctor, we don't need an EKG.
I can see everything from his veins to his capillaries.
Everything pulses to the beat.
I only see want and need.
Aug 17, 2017
Aug 17, 2017 at 1:15 AM UTC
Sleep Study
Do I have to buy the book? The SparkNotes?
Will this material be testable?
But all I have to do is go to sleep
In a lovely bed in a lovely room
To sleep, adorned with little EKG pads
And little wires a-running here and there
Like the wiring harness of a Packard
In need of a tuneup since ‘48
I cast aside a novel about spies
And in a bit begin to study sleep
Number Six: "How did I sleep?"
Number Two: "Sound as a bell. Have a nice day."
-The Prisoner
Jun 5, 2017
Jun 5, 2017 at 5:45 PM UTC